“I got well quicker than I expected,” went on Nestor, “an’ I couldn’t stand New York any longer. Mr. Wakefield left me a tidy sum. He grub-staked me, so to speak, an’ I come West. Got a quick train an’ made Chicago ’most as soon as you boys did in your auto wagon.”
“We’re glad to see you,” remarked Jerry.
“No more than I am to see you,” put in the miner. “Now let’s git right down to business. That’s my way. No beatin’ around the bush for Jim Nestor.
“I told your friend, Mr. Wakefield, that I’d put you boys up against a good big proposition. Now I’m goin’ to do it. Can you go as far as Arizona in that wagon of yours?”
“Farther if need be,” replied Ned.
“Good! Now will your folks let you go?”
For answer the boys held out their telegrams.
“Good, again I see it’s all right. Now I want you boys to know I ain’t so poor as I looked to be when you found me. I’m rich, that’s what I am, only I can’t git at my money.
“The long and short of it is that I discovered down in the southern part of Arizona a rich gold mine. It assays high. In fact, if you saw the gold I had in the hut, you saw some of the yellow stuff that came from my mine. It’s a lost mine.”
“A lost mine?” exclaimed Bob, blankly. “Then what good is it?”